We don’t always cover search industry news as we’d rather not just repeat what the other blogs are saying. Today’s a bit different though, the story of Microsoft and Yahoo!’s new 10-year search agreement deal is massive news!

Image credit: gnal

In case you’ve managed to miss it, here’s the latest news from around the blogosphere:

• It’s Finally Official, Microsoft & Yahoo Make A Deal, Yahoo Gives Up On Search – Search Engine Land
• Live Blogging The MSFT – YHOO Search Press Conference – Search Engine Land
• Microsoft, Yahoo Search Deal is Official – Search Engine Journal
• Yahoo Search Powered By Microsoft Bing: What SEMs Need To Know – Search Engine Roundtable
• Five things you need to know about the Yahoo/Microsoft deal – Brand Republic
• Does Bing/Yahoo Click-Through beats Google’s? – Search Cowboys
• Microsoft and Yahoo seal web deal – BBC

And here’s the agreement and videos from Choicevalueinnovation.com – a website launched to break the news.

How will this affect the search industry? In a nutshell, it’s now confirmed that Yahoo.com as a portal will be powered by Bing and Yahoo Search Marketing will be merged into Microsoft adCenter. But there’s lots more to think about too and I’ve given my thoughts about this to the search experts react to the Yahoo / Microsoft deal post on Econsultancy (just before the news broke) and Search Cowboys:

“This is a huge deal & boost for Bing. It instantly increases their market share & consolidates Yahoo & Microsoft into a far stronger competitor to Google. It’s great news for PPC advertisers too, as they can justify spending time/budget on a second paid search platform now instead of just using AdWords.”

For all of the comments from myself and other search industry professionals please read the Econsultancy and Search Cowboys posts.

Don’t worry though, you should have time to prepare – it’s going to take about 2 years until they’re ready! ;)

Posted in microsoft, search engine marketing, yahoo |